There's a new word creeping into the language, and its usage is a nasty bit of linguistic hypocrisy.

The word is "Christianist," and it's being used by Christians on the left (or what passes for the left within the narrow ideological band of organized Christianity) to describe certain Christians on the right.

The complaint of those who use the word "Christianist" is that the right wing of the religion is too rigid and exclusionary in its definition of who gets to be considered a Christian -- no gay people, no pro-choice people, etc -- and that this exclusionary tendency isn't a characteristic of genuine Christianity; they therefore don't deserve to be called Christians.

It is certainly true that at the extreme right wing of Christianity, there is a mighty big heap of hatred and exclusion going on. But in adopting the word "Christianist" to describe these folks, the left is doing precisely the same thing -- declaring that some of their co-religionists are too extreme in some fashion to be considered real Christians.

I'm not one to defend any sort of organized religion, and trying to distinguish one group of invisible-bully-in-the-sky cultists from another is rather like trying to distinguish chickpeas from garbanzos. But if the left really wants to make Christianity more inclusive, they're not going to do it by adopting the very exclusionary tactics they claim to loathe.